Willing as he was to set the entire graveyard on fire, if that was what it took, Aoshi regrets it almost instantly. He doesn't fear death — he never has — and he's dug deep enough that he need not be wary of the heat or the smoke, but the stench and roar of it would be enough to drive him mad, if he hadn't endured far worse than this.

Compared to the deaths of his men, what is waiting in a graveyard, straining every sense, to make sure Gein is truly dead?

It's instinct to wait without making a sound, tensing and relaxing muscles on a schedule he doesn't even need to think about. The hours slip by, slow and stretching, and, like a fool, he falls asleep.

He wakes with the sense that a door has been opened or a ceiling tile shifted aside, that there is another presence in the room with him. It is exactly the way he woke for years of his life — Hannya had always been more concerned with effectiveness, with delivering his intelligence as soon as he had it in context, than he or Aoshi had ever been with propriety or decorum or the necessity of sleep.

Years of ingrained habit, apparently not lessened by the year he's spent grieving Hannya's death, spur him to say, "Report then, Hannya," without bothering to open his eyes. He freezes as soon as the words leave his mouth.

It will not be Hannya. It cannot be Hannya. Instead, he's just broadcasted his location to a potentially unfriendly party — at best, Saitou or Sagara; at worst, Gein.

But he's not buried under anything, he realizes as he belatedly checks his surroundings. There are currents of air drifting by that hint at shoji walls, just barely whispering against his ears. What should be dirt beneath him, above him, is instead a futon and blanket, and his head rests on a pillow, rather than an ill-considered chunk of rock.

He is not in the graveyard.

And just as he realizes all of this, Hannya's voice says, "The woman has escaped again. Two of the guards were incompetent."

A dream, then. He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, counting backward, but when he opens them, the room is exactly the one he had not dared hoped it would be. His quarters in Takeda's mansion.

Judging by the heartbeat and the echo of his voice — as well as his own knowledge of the man — Hannya is hanging from a ceiling tile.

Aoshi sits up. It all feels real. But while this is a new form, he is no stranger to madness. He does not dare trust his senses now. Still, he makes his way across the room by ear, lighting one of the candles he leaves on his desk. The match is a harsh scraping noise in the darkness, and then there is a single point of brightness in the room, yellow-gold, illuminating only the desk.

The surface of the desk is as neat as ever, the reports he consults frequently all stacked neatly in one corner. No new reports in the center.

He holds his fingers above the candleflame in a careful gesture. But it's hot, hot enough that his fingers warm, and though he could go much longer if needed, he withdraws his hand.

Sight and touch are not lying to him right now. If this is a dream he's made for himself, some lunacy he invented after dwelling on his regrets, it's well done. Then again, a thing worth doing is worth doing well, if not perfectly.

"Have you sent Beshimi after her?" He doesn't look in Hannya's direction. He doesn't need to look to know that his intelligence master will have dropped soundlessly into the room with him.

"Not without your order, Okashira."

"Good. Let Takeda's bought idiots chase her a while, then." He knows where she'll be, if the dream goes that far.

Hannya says nothing. His silence asks all his questions for him.

"Let him see where his precious money is best spent," Aoshi replies. Only a hint of the bitterness he feels whenever he thinks of Takeda shows in his voice, but that is more than enough. He hears Hannya shift behind him, likely tilting his head in yet another silent question.

But Hannya already knows the answer. Even if he doesn't, Hannya has enough doubts of their current employment that Aoshi doesn't need to say anything at all.

He leans a little heavier against the desk. Because he can, because he hasn't woken up yet, Aoshi says, "Review Takeda's accounts. All of them. Tell me if he's bought anything unusual." Like a gatling gun. After another pause, he adds, "And send Shikijou to the dojo of Kamiya-Kasshin Ryuu."

Hannya actually responds verbally to that. His voice is careful, as if he's genuinely unsure of what's happening. "May I ask why?"

He almost answers with no, but Hannya deserves better from him than that. "Haven't you heard the rumors?"

Hannya inclines his head stiffly, but doesn't dignify it with an answer. There is no rumor that does not reach his ears; only someone who didn't know him at all would ever imply otherwise.

"I want to know if they're true."

"Of course, Okashira." A soft rustle as Hannya bows his head, his fist above his heart, and then no sound at all, nothing but the air moving through the room, even as Aoshi realizes that he's entirely alone.

He immediately strips his glove and drops his right wrist down to the candle, holding his skin to the flame until —

Yes. There it is.

He withdraws his arm, eyeing the red burn mark on his arm. He'll run cool water over it later; it's a burn so minor it's barely worth remembering at all. He pulls the glove back on and reaches for one of the reports.

This, more than the pain, is what convinces him that he's not in a dream. He has fooled his own senses before, if never quite this elaborately, but he has never been able to read in his dreams. He has understood some of what he's looked at, but his sleeping mind has never been able to reproduce kanji that don't writhe and shift and crawl off the page, and certainly not kanji in more than one hand.

But the reports are clear, legible, and obviously penned by multiple authors.

He has an answer, at least. But an answer that can only lead to more questions.

First: was the life he has apparently woken from in itself a dream? Hannya and Shikijou will be the ones to answer that.

Second: if that life was a dream, what good could that possibly say about his state of mind? A question he might reserve for Okina, or simply ponder through the sleepless nights he suspects are ahead of him.

Third: if that life was not a dream, and he has somehow awakened here again, what can that mean? Has some capricious deity brought him here to punish him, to force him to watch his worst, most unforgivable mistake over again?

But he's already changed it, he realizes. Sending Shikijou to Himura and Kamiya, rather than sending Beshimi chasing straight after Takani —

It can't be.

But he breathes in anyway, closing his eyes and savoring the very thought of it.

If it is, he's going to seize it, he decides.